Accessiforum & XHTML Mime Types
On Tuesday, October 21, 2003 Ian Lloyd posted a article entitled: "We Know Nothing..." Which linked to a beta of my 'AccessiForum' and the article was removed, without notice by Thursday, October 23 2003.
I strongly believe that Ian's post may have damaged my credibility I have noticed that on this forum people have been mocking my site. I feel that Ian did not make a good enough attempt to contact me personally to get his facts straight before posting.
Did the Accessify management for some warped reason see my 'AccessiForum' beta as some form of threat? I have tried to contact Ian on several occasions via e-mail but have received no clear explanation why my 'AccessiForum' beta made front-page news and then disappeared.
In retrospect, I now releas, the immense damage that publicity caused, I have personally seen people mocking the site on this forum and it has deeply hurt my feelings. Quietly erasing the link by stealth from the Accessify front page was like "closing the door after the horse had bolted".
I very much doubt you cared to notice I am 14-years of age and am still learning many of the crafts to become a successful Webmaster. I also doubt that one will get any apology by anyone, though I would like you to know the situation.
My inspiration for the 'AccessiForum' came from Accessify, essentially 'AccessiForum' is an open-source project that I wish to develop into an accessible forum that will promote the use of web accessibility and such ethics.
I hope to package it as three separate entities, which correspond in version number and level of WCAG 1.0. (Level A for version A, level AA for version AA, and level AAA for version AAA.)
I believe at least am I owed an explanation of why a link to 'AccessiForum' appeared on the front page of Accessify, I nearly considered giving up after I received such crushing negative press!
[J]ona
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Hello Jona.
I saw the link on Acessify.com and decided to check it out, since I'm interested in the subject of accessibility, as, obviously, you are. I did notice that it was under construction, but I completely failed to see the information about your age.
Since I detected a number of things that I thought was ... let's say "not very accessible," I thought it was kind of funny on a site about accessibility. I then posted here, in a tone that in retrospect must definitely be considered as mocking.
I'm very ashamed and embarrassed about this, now that I know a little more about the background.
Therefore, I'd like to offer my sincere apology to you for the tone of my post.
I am truly sorry that I hurt your feelings (but you should also be prepared for criticism when you publish something on the Internet - especially in a beta version).
I think you've got a good thing going, although it needs some more work. I honestly hope that I haven't discouraged you from continuing to develop AccessiForum. Maybe you could read the critical posts about it, pay attention to some of the criticism, and fix the problems before your official release?
I don't think Ian's post damaged your credibility, neither do I believe that anyone here sees AccessiForum as a threat. Anything to promote accessibility consciousness is good, isn't it?
The link was apparently removed from Accessify.com as soon as Ian realized what this was all about. Since you don't seem to be ready to receive critique for your site yet, I would have thought that you'd approve of this.
In the light of the new information, I'd like to say that your site is quite an impressive accomplishment for such a young person. Again, I apologize for the way I expressed myself in my post.
Tommy has left the building
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Yes, it does need a lot of work, but it is a beginning. I believe that what he said may have damaged my credibility because it is still a beta form, and I had only put it online for a few testing purposes. Moreover, he did not really attempt to contact me--not with a great deal of effort, anyway. I had emailed him and received no reply, so that is why I posted here. I am hoping he will reply...
I am open to criticism, and in fact want it, but please remember I have not completely finished it, and its beta form isn't even complete. In fact, I am thinking about redesigning it a bit, and changing the "logo" I made for it--something easier to read. I used the word "Accessify" in the "logo" (and it is in quotes because it's not really a logo, just something I threw together in Photoshop) simply because it is a word, not because I was thinking anything about www.Accessify.com. Although Accessify.com did, indeed, enlighten me on the definition and existence of the verb itself, I am not trying to take anything away from Accessify.com.
Again, I am not resisting criticism, I am suggesting that Ian's post could have caused skepticism among those who read it, and therefore damaged my credibility (and may already have done so).
Thank you for your response,
[J]ona
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Negative criticism may indeed damage someone's reputation, but I cannot see that anything Ian wrote would do that to you.
Mainly, the content and layout of a site speak for themselves. If you write good content and "live as you preach" (i.e. a site about accessibility should be accessible, a site about web standards should be standards-compliant, etc) your visitors will judge for themselves.
My advise to you is to focus on making a good site, and not to worry too much about what others think at this time. If you want input, or help, you're more than welcome to post here and we'll do what we can.
I think you're being over-sensitive about this. I didn't see any "crushing negative press" or anything; just some remarks about stuff that wasn't fully accessible.
You've got a good thing going. Keep up the good work, and call on us if you need anything.
Tommy has left the building
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Thanks, I just put up a new beta version of it that I think looks a lot better. Probably not level AA yet, but it's getting there. http://cmm.sonoracabinets.com/accessiforum/new/ is where it's located. Mind you, the only documents that are uploaded are the main page and the support.php (Support Us) page - I haven't uploaded the new logo yet, so if it looks stupid, I'm going to have a new one done soon.
Oh, and I suggest viewing it in Mozilla FireBird, by the way. IE = Internet Exploiter... :p
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I see you got around to learning XHTML and the contact form looks remotely familiar, I suppose Ian realised the error of his ways by removing the post but at least it is all the open now.
I am surprised he did not contact you when you e-mailed your concerns though, since that is not very good for public relations.
Perhaps you might want to submit the beta to the "Site Critiques" section once you have created some more functional pages.
};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
Last edited by Robert Wellock on 03 Nov 2003 04:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I took a quick look ... using IE5.5/Win (I'm at work, and it's the only browser they've got).
First of all: it looks very good!
I turned images off, and your design coped very well with that.
When I made the text larger, the left-hand column eventually overlapped the content. You may want to specify the widths in em's to prevent that.
The Support Us page gave me a horizontal scroll bar for no apparent reason; the input fields were quite narrow, and centered.
I don't like the XHTML 1.1 doctype coupled with the text/html MIME type. The W3C says "should not" about this combination, which means that you ought to have a darn good reason for doing it.
Also, in the form, I'm suspicious about using <strong> to indicate the access keys. It displays nicely in a visual browser, and I think I understand the semantic thinking behind it, but I'm not sure how you expect a screen reader to handle it. For instance,
| Code: |
| <strong>N</strong>ame |
How should a screen reader put strong emphasis on the 'N'? I've tried pronouncing it myself, but I failed
Finally, I'm wondering about your putting Opera together with the Inherently Evil (IE) as non-compliant browsers. Opera has just about the best CSS support of the lot, maybe because one of its front figures, Håkon Lie, is the man behind CSS in the first place. Yes, they have some rendering bugs, but I normally classify Mozilla and Opera as the Good Browsers.
Tommy has left the building
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Jaws For Windows would emphasis the contents between the <strong> element. Though using something like CSS to underline an accesskey value would be semi-pointless exercise because you have to assume they have CSS enabled and are using the authors stylesheet for that case - the CSS option would have not real semantic meaning.
Opera 7.2x is a reasonable browser apart from a few very strange quirks; so perhaps what Jona meant was he would prefer you to use standards compliant browser. I assume he is not very familiar with the latest Opera, quite rightly notices that M$ Explorer is a hideous beast that is something we unfortunately have to still deal with.
Although I am gravitating towards xhtml+xml it's perfectly acceptable to serve XHTML 1.1 as text/html for several reasons. People often get the RFC's confused with standards and recommendations and xhtml+xml is just a recommendation.
Call it best pratice at the momment since XHTML is an application of XML and always has been even before such a xhtml+xml mime was available.
};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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| Jona wrote: |
| On Tuesday, October 21, 2003 Ian Lloyd posted a article entitled: "We Know Nothing..." Which linked to a beta of my 'AccessiForum' and the article was removed, without notice by Thursday, October 23 2003.
I strongly believe that Ian's post may have damaged my credibility I have noticed that on this forum people have been mocking my site. I feel that Ian did not make a good enough attempt to contact me personally to get his facts straight before posting. Did the Accessify management for some warped reason see my 'AccessiForum' beta as some form of threat? I have tried to contact Ian on several occasions via e-mail but have received no clear explanation why my 'AccessiForum' beta made front-page news and then disappeared. In retrospect, I now releas, the immense damage that publicity caused, I have personally seen people mocking the site on this forum and it has deeply hurt my feelings. Quietly erasing the link by stealth from the Accessify front page was like "closing the door after the horse had bolted". I very much doubt you cared to notice I am 14-years of age and am still learning many of the crafts to become a successful Webmaster. I also doubt that one will get any apology by anyone, though I would like you to know the situation. My inspiration for the 'AccessiForum' came from Accessify, essentially 'AccessiForum' is an open-source project that I wish to develop into an accessible forum that will promote the use of web accessibility and such ethics. I hope to package it as three separate entities, which correspond in version number and level of WCAG 1.0. (Level A for version A, level AA for version AA, and level AAA for version AAA.) I believe at least am I owed an explanation of why a link to 'AccessiForum' appeared on the front page of Accessify, I nearly considered giving up after I received such crushing negative press! [J]ona |
For the record Jona I see no way that Ian's post could possibly have damaged your credibility, in fact I would say that your post here would damage Ian's more than his would damage yours.
For those who did not see the post your post here would suggest it was very damaging, here is what Ian's post said:
| Quote: |
| We know nothing...
Well, we know nothing about this, at least. It's nothing to do with this site, nor has it got anything to do with the discussion forum. Nor can we actually work out what this site actually is ... |
Accessify is not, in fact, a verb that can be found in the dictionary and was invented by Ian when he created the site. Therefore any use of the word Accessify could currently be thought to have something to do with either Accessify or this forum. Ian was simply making it clear that your forum software and these sites are not in any way connected.
After finding out some further information Ian decided that he would remove the post from Accessify for the present time. However there are no facts in the above post that are not 'straight'. The forum is nothing to do with these sites, we knew nothing about it, and we couldn't work out what it was. Which facts did he not get straight?
No malice was ever intended, if you take offense from the tone of posts on this forum following from Ian's post I am afriad that Ian can not be held responsible for that, this is an open forum and your forum software was published on the open Internet. If you did not want people to see it you should not have published it for them to see.
Members of this forum are welcome to state their opinion just as much as you are welcome to state yours.
Again I strongly disagree that Ian's post would in any way damage your credibility, I think it would be prudent for you to apologise for implying that he did, but I leave it up to you.
Welcome to the forums, I hope you'll stay around
Cheers,
Nigel Peck
Administrator
Accessify Forum
Accessify Forum Administrator ~ Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
"Everything I say is not meant to be set in stone" - Van Morrison
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I think Nigel has kindly answered on my behalf and said what I wanted to.
The truth is - I *tried* on several occassions to contact you using the contact us pages (there were two of them, as I recall). Neither of them worked for me, throwing back server errors of some description.
I looked in vain for another contact method - either on the page or in the source code and found nothing.
I also searched on Google for anything relating to your site that might have revealed some more information, but found nothing.
http://www.google.com/search?q=accessiforum&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
So, as I was not able to contact you, all I was left with was the post on Accessify home page, and this was not done in a nasty manner - it simply said "Nothing to do with me". I couldn't do any more, unfortunately.
I apologise if this has caused you embarrasment - just as this is causing me embarrasment - but had you had an email on any of your pages or if the contact us pages had been working when I tried them, none of this would have happened.
I *did* remove the post when someone pointed out that you were 14, just working stuff out and so on. I think I've been fair and even-handed, but I'm sorry if that hasn't come across.
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Last edited by lloydi on 03 Nov 2003 02:12 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I suppose somewhere along the line, commucations got tangled up (or lack of) and it was obvious that there were misinterpretations by both parties about the said "news article".
I don't think Jona was explicitly asking for an apology as such rather an explanation from the author of the article about what actually motivated him to post the link.
Obviously Jona has received negative comments from various forums as a direct result of people misinterpreting the article while it was still in the public domain.
Because as the content suggested it was
| Quote: |
| ...nothing to do with this site... |
Therefore it doesn't take a genius to speculate that the two entities were being officially declared as divorced; that in essence is where the crux lies since they are both forums themed around accessibility.
I suppose what confused Ian was that Jona misunderstood the term (verb) "accessify" as a word even so I very much doubt it is a registered trademark, copyrighted yes.
It can be concluded due to lack of thriving commucation between both parties concerning the 'site' and the 'article' in question were "misinterpreted" leading to confusion and perhaps the original topic, which quite clearly has injured both parties in some form.
Alas, it can be concluded we all learn from our mistakes and the actions result in consequences.
I my personal opinion neither parties need apologise to each other let bygones be bygones, though they do need to actively converse via the web - which clearly was the original issue - to set the record straight.
I admit I may have been the hand that helped sway Ian to remove the article before things grew out of proportion.
};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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| Quote: |
| I suppose somewhere along the line, commucations got tangled up (or lack of) and it was obvious that there were misinterpretations by both parties about the said "news article".
I don't think Jona was explicitly asking for an apology as such rather an explanation from the author of the article about what actually motivated him to post the link. Obviously Jona has received negative comments from various forums as a direct result of people misinterpreting the article while it was still in the public domain. |
The negative comments are a direct result of the quality of the site, not the person who told them the site exists.
| Quote: | ||
Because as the content suggested it was
Therefore it doesn't take a genius to speculate that the two entities were being officially declared as divorced; that in essence is where the crux lies since they are both forums themed around accessibility. |
The quality of the site is irrelevant to the point that it is nothing to do with these sites, we would make it clear that we were not related to any sites on a similar theme with a similar name to avoid confusion for our users.
| Quote: |
| I suppose what confused Ian was that Jona misunderstood the term (verb) "accessify" as a word even so I very much doubt it is a registered trademark, copyrighted yes. |
If it was a registered trademark then it would have been handled more seriously than a post on the news page.
| Quote: |
| It can be concluded due to lack of thriving commucation between both parties concerning the 'site' and the 'article' in question were "misinterpreted" leading to confusion and perhaps the original topic, which quite clearly has injured both parties in some form.
Alas, it can be concluded we all learn from our mistakes and the actions result in consequences. I my personal opinion neither parties need apologise to each other let bygones be bygones, though they do need to actively converse via the web - which clearly was the original issue - to set the record straight. I admit I may have been the hand that helped sway Ian to remove the article before things grew out of proportion. |
You were the hand that started the whole thing off in the first place when you sent me the link to the Accessiforum as a potential clone. What did you expect us to do about it other than post to Accessify?
Yes you had a hand in it being removed by telling me his age later but you also had a hand in it appearing in the first place.
Cheers,
Nigel
Accessify Forum Administrator ~ Nigel Peck / MIS Web Design
"Everything I say is not meant to be set in stone" - Van Morrison
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One other thing - I do respond to people's e-mails, but I admittedly have something of a backlog at the moment. Mostly these are of the nature of:
- can you add a link
- here's my submission for list-a-matic style
- broken link info
... which I will go through and attack in one hit.
Anything else I respond to pretty much immediately - and yours, Jona, would have been no exception. However, I have never received any emails from you (and I have just checked to be sure of this) - where were you sending them? What address were you using?
My e-mail address is marked at the foot of every page of Accessify (which is currently down completely due to domain issues that are being resolved - normal service back within 24 hrs). It is accessify AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk (sorry, I never type this in the clear for spambots to find)
Failing that, the Contact Us page is linked to on every page of accessify (and I can assure you that these messages are all getting through to me loud and clear)
I have no idea why you were unable to contact me. You could have sent me a private message through this forum, too - that would have arrived.
I welcome any moves from anyone who might want to create an accessible forum - it's a much-needed commodity - and I encourage you to carry on with it. Initially, I merely wanted to get in touch to inform you that accessify and accessifyforum were already up-and-running and wanted to find out what you were intending with your site. Because I was never able to submit the contact us form, I couldn't get that message to you, hence I opted for the distancing approach.
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Hello Ian,
I wasn't exactly sure what your username here is, so that is why I did not send a PM. Also I contacted you via the link in the main pages where you posted (mailto:ian.lloyd@nospam.com or something like that), and assumed that was your email address. I had fixed the contact form one day after I had seen your post, which apparently had been there for two days (?) already. I realize that Accessify and AccessifyForum are already a popular way to go, but I am more or less "learning" PHP (more like experimenting), and needed to create a custom forum for a system I'm hoping to add to www.GameTalk.com's Web site (online RPG). While I was at it, and since all sites that I do (nowadays) are standards-compliant, valid coded and fit with the WCAG 1.0 usually at least level A, I decided that I may as well go ahead and make the forum-area of the game open-source to promote the use of accessible fora and sites. I figured it was a great way to do so. If I'm "endangering" or "stealing" anything from Accessify.com, please just tell me and I'll be more than happy to change the name. I must admit, you had me convinced. You made it sound so real when the logo of Accessify.com says, "verb: to make accessible," that I figured, "Hey, I didn't know that was in the dictionary!" and chose to use AccessiForum as my "name." Great name, by the way.
I'm glad we're getting the facts straight, though.
[J]ona
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| TOOLman wrote: |
| When I made the text larger, the left-hand column eventually overlapped the content. You may want to specify the widths in em's to prevent that. |
Yeah, thanks, I did that. It's not online (Web server on my local disk but not connected to the Internet), but it works.
| TOOLman wrote: |
| The Support Us page gave me a horizontal scroll bar for no apparent reason; the input fields were quite narrow, and centered. |
IE5.5? Hmm, it doesn't do that in IE6 or Moz, and I don't have IE5.5. I wonder what could be wrong...?
Also, about the text/html MIME type, the W3C is either a hypocrite, XHTML 1.1 and 1.0 are the difference here, or the W3C has a good reason for showing the text/html MIME type in an XHTML 1.0 document template: http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html (scroll down to the bottom). What do you suggest I use instead? <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/xml; charset=iso-8859-1" /> ?
[J]ona
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